Come and make UV resin stuff with me!

Make UV resin stuff with me & my friend Sam! 

Of course once everyone saw what we were doing others wanted to make stuff too!

I've had all this resin stuff for over a year.  When I decided to make glitter tumblers, I bought a lot of other resin molds and things so that I could make resin items.  Well, shockingly I never did.  That was a year ago.  My friend Sam and I decided to get kits from Amazon and give it a shot.  Everything turned out really nice!

This is Sam and I
She makes a lot of candles and soaps that smell amazing!  Maybe one day I'll blog the process for you.  She always makes it look so easy.

The kits were super inexpensive and came with all kinds of stuff including the light, a small bottle of resin, molds, glitter, and well here it is.

Link to UV resin kit

 I paid 16.99 plus tax, however, Amazon does change prices from time to time, so check out other listings.  Just make sure its a UV Resin Kit that includes the light and resin if you need it.  There are so many kits avail that you will want all of them.

For UV resin you need a UV light to cure the resin.  This set came with one and I pulled out a gel UV light for my nails and that will work too.

This is a pic of the table.  You can see all the stuff I drug out to use for the project.  You can use shaker bits, glitters, alcohol inks, little trinkets, all kinds of stuff from other crafts you may already do.  My friend Sam bought a kit too so we just had a mess of UV resin stuff to play with.

Really the things your absolutely need are below:

• UV light 4 to 24 watts.
• The smaller the watt the longer it will take to cure
• UV Resin
• You can find this at big box stores but you will pay a premium
• The one that came with the kit worked just fine and it was included in the kit
• The bottles are noted in grams so I would go with as much as you can get.  Trust me you will want to have more!
• Glitter, shaker bits, metal trinkets, really anything you want to put in the resin.
• If you use paper or stickers, you must seal them with either a few coats of Mod Podge or spray paint.
• You can use vinyl without any sealer, you will want to just put more UV resin on top of the vinyl and seal with the light.
• Heat Gun or even a BBQ lighter
• This will pop bubbles but use sparingly.  You can also just use a tooth pick to pop them before you cure.
• The UV light pictured below was a Gel nail UV light not the one with the kit.  I liked this one better because it cures faster 25 watt and its larger so it will accommodate larger pcs.
• Super large pcs may just need to be used with regular resin plus UV resin is expensive  even the bracelet was kinda too large.  It took half the bottle that came with this kit.
• Larger pcs may not cure, so make sure you are using UV for mostly smaller items.
• You will want baby wipes, use these to wipe off any item that is not silicone so that the resin doesn't permanently stick to it.
• Gloves, you really shouldn't be using this stuff without gloves to protect your skin.  Also, do this in a well ventilated area.  This is why we were outside.

Its really easy.  First I wanted to make a bracelet for my daughter for Valentines day.

You take the resin, do not shake ( we do not need more bubbles )

Pour the UV resin carefully into the resin mold.  Next time I think I'll use a syringe and it was hard to tell when this mold was full.  I also kept spilling the resin over the top of the mold.  

Then just press in some kind of item.  For this I used little hearts that I usually use for shaker cards. If you decide to use glitter, I suggest getting a silicone cup.  This way you can mix the glitter in with your resin then pour it into the bracelet.

Also, once you are done with your silicone cup, put it under the light.  It will harden the resin and make an easy clean up.

Keep the resin, you can then use it as a filler and make a cute tye-dye filled resin something or other.

Put it under your light for about 3 min, it doesn't hurt to flip it over and do another couple min on the other side, or in the sun for a while and the UV rays will harden it.

If its sticky, put it back under the light to cure longer.  Let the mold cool down before you take the item out.  If you take it out too early it may be warped.  If it is warped you can always sand it down, wipe the dust, put more resin on top and re cure it.  This process will fix whatever issues you may have had.

Our resin kept hardening as we were doing this outside in the shade.  I think I'm going to try and do it inside of the garage to prevent it from hardening so early.

Curing under the light

Taking the bracelet out of the mold

Look how pretty!

I did have bubbles, but the bracelet turned out great, I did overfill and you can see it on the other side.  I can simply sand that down.

My friend Sam made these cute earrings. You can always resin the earring backs on or use the hole this particular mold creates for a jump ring and attach a back with that.

Sam poured the resin in the mold then carefully placed the bits on top and pushed them in with a pick.  Another way is to mix some bits or glitter with your resin then pour it in.  UV has a nice tip on it though so its easier to pour it in first.

To use  bezels you just put a piece of packing tape down, sticky side up.  Then lay your filler item down (yellow beetle), then take the heart, center the beetle inside and make sure its stuck really good.  Fill your item with glitter, or whatever, then put in your resin, cure as normal (both sides) and its done!  I noticed the brad created an air pocket underneath.  Just put some resin down on the tape before you lay your beetle on, or add more later on the back over the brad where it isn't fully filled with resin.  Its really easy to do these.

If you get too much resin and you don't like it, sand it down, dust it off, and just put more resin on and re cure.  I made  this out of a brad I had in my scrapbook stash.  We clipped off the back with wire snippers.  You can use scissors but you might nick up your scissors.

These are all the items we made with the resin provided.  It only came with 60g or 2 ounces of resin but I cannot wait to play with it again.  I found several more UV resin suppliers on Amazon that sell resin cheaper than the big box stores, so go take a look.  I'll be posting more blogs on UV resin and I'll provide links of the supplies I purchased.

This was a super fun kit, sure I added stuff from home, but that is the fun part.  My friend Sam and I will be making more soon. When we do, I'll be posting more blogs!

I hope you enjoyed the blog on UV resin.  I think next I'll tackle UV resin pens!  I'll also be writing a blog on regular resin soon.  I am sure there is a lot more to learn, if you have played with any of this, please leave me comments with tips.

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